The first part of Jon M Chu’s adaptation of Wicked is currently top of the global box office and is already picking up major award-season momentum.
The films are based on the acclaimed stage show which follows Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a misunderstood young woman because of her green skin, and Glinda (Ariana Grande), a popular girl, who become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz.
Chu, Erivo and Grande wanted to record live vocals on set, which meant the film’s production sound mixer Simon Hayes and re-recording mixer Andy Nelson had to deal with the transition from dialogue into a song.
“During vocal pre-records, the studio will use typical large-diaphragm mics. We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if pre-records were also covered on booms and lavs?’” explains Hayes, who tested the technique on 2012’s Les Misérables and has been using it on musicals ever since. “This would allow the re-recording mixers to very gently—over the course of the song—seamlessly blend the dialogue into the on-set vocals into the studio vocals,” he tells TVBEurope’s sister title, Mix.
For production sound, Hayes chose Schoeps CMC6 boom mics with MK41 capsules and DPA 4061 lavalier mics, the latter for their transparent sound, flat response, and ability to handle high, sustained sound pressure levels.
“I’m looking for microphones that sound like the person who’s singing,” Hayes says. “DPAs are the only lav mics on the market that can capture that flat response and also deal with the extremely high SPLs of Cynthia Erivo singing numbers like Defying Gravity. Cynthia can carry beautifully sustained notes louder than most people can shout. The DPAs don’t sound brittle when you’re hitting them with those SPLs.”
Hayes worked closely with the film’s costume designer Paul Tazewell to find the best mic placements on each costume, which was particularly challenging for the character of Glinda, played by Grande, due to the low-cut design of her dresses. Instead of having a centrally placed lav mic near the neckline or under a hat brim, as he could for Ervio’s character Elphaba, Glinda’s dresses concealed a pair of lav mics—one near each shoulder—that were recorded onto two separate tracks.
“If Ariana turned to her left, she was completely on-mic,” Hayes explains. “If she turned to her right, she was completely on-mic. It also solved another issue: Glinda’s dresses were often frilly and made of chiffon, so there was an element of clothing rustle. By giving [supervising sound editor Nancy Nugent Title] two separate tracks of Glinda, she could cut between them — so if there was a slight rustle on one of those microphones, potentially there wouldn’t be on the other track.”
By singing live on-set, the actors could let their dialogue delivery naturally develop into a song. They could take their time getting into it before the orchestration kicked in. “That’s always lovely because the transitions are what most people are very aware of,” notes Nelson, who handled dialogue and music at the final mix. “In this film, they’re extraordinarily seamless due to a variety of reasons, like the miking, the picture editing by Myron Kerstein, and also the freedom to start a song at their own pace.”
Read Jennifer Walden’s full feature on the sound of Wicked here.
